


they hugged and cried and fell to the floor

by ohwhatagloomyshow



Category: The Book Thief - Markus Zusak
Genre: F/M, Friendship/Love, Love
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-09-02
Updated: 2013-09-02
Packaged: 2017-12-25 10:08:32
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,071
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/951838
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/ohwhatagloomyshow/pseuds/ohwhatagloomyshow
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>A series of oneshots connected together to form a story of what happens to Max and Liesel after the events of "The Book Thief." 1001% ship fic.</p>
            </blockquote>





	they hugged and cried and fell to the floor

They’re a mess of limbs as they fall together to the linoleum floor: his arms struggle to hold every inch of her while her own hands tangle up in his shirt, in his hair. They can’t recognize which spit is their own, which tears are their own as they stain one another’s clothing with the vehemence of their relief, their happiness. Skin catches patch of skin, section of clothing, lock of hair. He makes enough sense of her new body, to find her head, to place kiss after kiss upon her crown, her part line, her eyebrow. His lips are chapped and wet in strange places but she accepts their touch; she returns them on the curve of his jaw, his Adam’s apple, his nose. She cannot kiss him enough. 

~~ 

Ilsa Hermann’s fire warmed her bones as she and Max sat in the parlor by the hearth, letting the heat shake that damn fall cold from their veins. He sat on the couch while she sat on the floor; his legs were parted so her shoulders could fit comfortably between his knees. Both held steaming cups of cocoa that the Mayor’s wife had prepared for them before retiring to her own chilly bedroom. All lights were out: the flickering flames provided the only amber light. 

Liesel sipped her chocolate slowly and shivered as it slipped, warm and comforting, down her throat to spread through her core, relaxing her tense shoulders and straining back. The colder the weather became, the harder working for Herr Steiner became—more customers came every week, and the damp chilly air did not help her weary limbs carry her down the hills to the shop. Ilsa Hermann’s nightly treats were an absolute blessing, as was her permission to let Max relax with her every evening until eleven. For the past month he had rented an apartment nearby in order to help Herr Steiner as well; once, quietly, he told Liesel that he felt he owed it to the poor man after having heard so much about Rudy, having felt for a few short months that he had known his lemon-haired son. 

Max finished his drink before the girl did, and set the empty mug beside her. She nestled more comfortably against his leg, resting her head to the side, her shoulder beneath his thigh. With an intimacy that came only from their shared miseries, Max’s warmed hands found her hair, and slowly he stroked through the loose blondish locks. She sighed as his fingernails scratched her scalp, gathered her hair in his palms before dropping it gracefully back on her shoulders, only to repeat the gesture until she yawned and stretched, like a large, pampered cat. 

“It’s so warm here,” she sighed, cuddling closer into his leg. He smiled, his rough hands struggling to remember the braid Sarah had forced him to learn too many years ago. Liesel didn’t seem to mind, even moved closer to his grasp to make his work easier. 

“I’m still sorry about the snowman,” she murmured through heavy lips, clearly slipping into a comfortable drowsiness. It took him several moments to realize what she was referencing, and when he did, he chuckled. 

“I loved it, Liesel.” 

“It almost _killed_ you.” Even through the slurring, her tone had an honest bite. 

“It made the basement feel like home.” He hoped it would make her drop the conversation; they only seemed to speak of the basement days when it came, unasked, into their tired minds, and as a result both had nightmares after each occurrence. He hated even the suggestion of the girl having less than a happy night’s sleep, so he added, “You should get up to bed.” 

The braid was crooked but passable, he determined, as he released it in order to grip under her arms. She didn’t struggle; easily released his leg in order to be guided by his knowing hands. She leaned heavily on his side, very warm and very comforting. He prayed he wouldn’t have to carry her—he had been free for eight months but he didn’t nearly have that much strength, and it would be embarrassing, insinuating, to call for the Mayor for help. 

“I’m still…sorry.” The largest yawn he had ever seen, as they strolled through the threshold into the hallway. 

“I forgive you.” It was no use arguing with the girl; no amount of honest pleading could turn her off her focus. She seemed to smile at the words. 

It took much urging to get her up the stairs in one piece, but her room was easy enough to reach after that trek. “I’m fine,” she forced out before another heavy yawn, pushing away from his hold in order to stumble forward. “I don’t know why I’m so tired.” 

“You had a very long day.” 

She opened her bedroom door, revealing the modest space inside. The only hint of personality was the tidy pile of books shoved beneath the window; all else was blank and austere, giving the appearance of a guest rather than a permanent resident. He had only seen the inside of her room a few times, and the sight broke his heart all over again. 

She gave him a tight hug around the waist, which he happily returned as his hands snaked around her shoulders. “Sleep tight, word shaker.” She pulled away to smirk at him, and as she did, a few tendrils of hair slipped from the loosening braid; he pushed them gently behind her ears and kissed her on the part of her hair. 

“You too, Max. See you tomorrow.” 

~~~ 

He stayed for a month and a half in Molching, assisting Herr Steiner in the shop whenever Alex accepted the extra help, but for the most part the town watched with sad eyes as the survivors trekked their way through the leftover streets, sometimes talking and sometimes not. They seldom visited the cemetery, favored the paths along the Amper River. It was a decent afternoon for early December when he told her he would leave again. 

"I need to make sure that I’m the only—that no one else survived," he said through a shrug as they sat by the freezing river. Liesel nodded. 

"You should." She turned to look at him, tucked loose hair behind her ear, smiled. "It’ll be good for you. No matter what you discover." 

Two weeks till Christmas, he hugged her goodbye in the Mayor’s doorway. She planted a rather sloppy kiss on his cheek; he smiled and then was gone. 

Her remaining years with the Hermanns were uneventful and slow: the schooling was chaotic but the learning was supplemented by the magnificent library and kind Ilsa; as she grew older, she realized that few jobs were open for a young woman in a broken village with a passable formal education. The Mayor’s wife had assured her that she could stay with them as long as she liked, but there was an itching in the palms of her hands for more, always for more. She was twenty when she kissed them goodbye, thanking them for their unending generosity and warmth. She took her Papa’s accordion and an armful of books. 

Alex Steiner was happy to see her go, glad that the young woman he considered his daughter was about to start her life again. He kissed her goodbye as well and offered to repair any ruined clothing she should have. She grinned and said goodbye to the shop, memories of tripping over mannequins and Christmas and candles, of falling to the floor with Max safe in her arms. She nearly gave it a kiss as well, but instead she tightened the grip on her suitcases and headed out to the train station. 

She lived in nearby Munich, in an apartment much too small for her comfort but big enough to absorb most of her money. She worked as a waitress in a cafe close to home, the only decent job that would take her. It kept her busy enough throughout the day, and throughout the night she read as many books as she could carry home from the closest library ten blocks away. She endured. 

On a hot day in July, the only day off she had for the month, he knocked on her door. 

He was tanner and clean-shaven, the brown feathery hair well tamed and short against his temples; he was the healthiest she had ever seen him, with a long, well-tailored light suit and leather shoes that shone just outside her threshold. His smile was half-guilty and brilliant. His eyes, although no longer shadowed from loss of sleep, continued to look haunted. 

She yelled his name and threw her arms around his neck; he even managed to lift her into the air as he hugged her. 

She invited him in for lemonade. 

They sat by her open window, loving the breeze as it played with their hair and cooled their sun-kissed skin. He said, “You look phenomenal,” with her hair curled and lipstick bright, and she smiled and said, “So do you.” 

It took nearly an hour of catching up for them to crawl cautiously to the subject of his leaving. He played anxiously with the gold ring on his smallest finger. "I found Walter—Walter Kugler—I found him again, he was still living in Stuttgart. There were strangers living in my uncle’s house—they owned it, they had bought it, but it was…. I stayed with him for a few years, trying to find out anything I could. He had tried to get the rest of them out; he found a hide out for Sarah shortly after I left, but he doesn’t know how successful that was. He never heard from my mother again, they just came in—the Nazis came in and took them away, he didn’t—he never found out what happened." His voice was thick and he swallowed several times. "He helped me travel to Buchenwald and Bergen-Belsen, and even Ravensbruck, but they were a mess—no one could tell me anything. We tried what we could but we didn’t have enough money to visit the people that could have helped us the most. We did the best with what we had." He put his head in his hands, with his still-bony elbows digging into his thighs. "I don’t know what to do." He was silent for several moments; he rubbed his face and breathed deeply as Liesel watched, her nails biting into her hands as they clutched into fists on her lap. It was hideous to watch him, to feel powerless against such incredible pain. 

"Stay with me." Her voice wavered as she said it; she fidgeted and brushed a curl behind her ear. "Stay here in Munich, just for a few days. With me." 

He looked up from his fingers, and there was a hint of a smile. “All right.” 

When evening came she loaded her tiny couch with pillows and blankets, apologizing again and again at such miserable accommodations. He brushed off her pleas with a lazy smile, finally grabbing her wrists forcefully as she fretted over the state of her quilts. 

"It’s fine, Liesel." Something in his voice caught her attention; she stopped glancing over the meager ersatz bed to look at him, her bottom lip still caught between her teeth. His expression was soft, and the haunted look almost left his eyes. "I’m just glad to see you again." Almost as an afterthought, he released her wrists, and she immediately crossed her arms tightly across her chest. 

"I’m glad to see you, too." A rush of emotion overcame her, unexpectedly and suddenly enough to be infuriating. It swelled her heart and choked her throat and her eyes grew wet. "You were away for so long." Speaking was difficult; she clutched absently at her neck. "I missed you so much, I don’t want you to go away again." 

She hadn’t stopped staring at him all day, re-remembering every part of him. The way his profile looked in the sunlight, the curve of his shoulders, the suggestion of muscles beneath his fine shirt as he removed his jacket. The fine lines of his neck beneath the unbuttoned collar. The expression of his hands. 

He tried to smile at her but it faltered; instead he cupped her jaw carefully in his palms. He swallowed several times, traced over her features again and again, each time slower than the last. His thumb traced her cheekbones. “You’re very, very beautiful, Liesel.” 

She gave a strangled laugh as he knelt down to press his lips against hers; she responded with fervor, wrapping her arms tightly around his neck, her mouth tight against his. One of his hands migrated around her head to grip the hair at the nape of her neck, while the other held her firmly around the small of her back. They separated after a moment and they were laughing, and they were crying. 

They slept, her back to his chest, cuddled tightly together on her too-small couch, their hands clutching each other at her stomach. 

~~~~ 

His stays in her cramped Munich apartment grew longer, with fewer times between visits. The majority of his things remained at Walter Kugler’s, but extra suits were shoved between her drawers, within her closet for potential overnight stays. Now he didn’t need to fall to make his way into Liesel’s bed: he was happily invited, as a comforting heartbeat and familiar hands to be held in hers as they slept side by side, almost too close for comfort as they squeezed together on her tiny mattress. The couch in the living room/dining room/den had been deemed unfit for his lanky body. Somehow, the joined breathing of their four lungs kept the nightmares away. 

The two extra suits became five, became several sets of underwear and pairs of shoes. His books were the next natural things to make the journey, but still the majority of his possessions stayed with him in Stuttgart where he continued to work in a department store on weekdays. Early Friday evening to late Sunday night were then all on her time. Until the day he treated her to a dinner out and almost timidly suggested that he hunt for jobs in the city. She, as a result, was overjoyed, and the rest of the night was spent planning on what to do with the extra money he would bring in if he found a better job: she wanted a home with the largest library and a pleasant yard; he joked about an enormous basement. 

The next week he took time off from the store and spent it with her: on a cloudy Tuesday he kissed her goodbye, “for luck” in the job hunting, and suggested that she house-hunt in return. She pleasantly agreed. 

She returned before he did, slightly soaking from the downpour and eager to rest her feet. Water was put on the stove and she stripped into warmer clothes. It took ten minutes to see the bundle. 

Mug nearly burning her hands and sweater soft against her stomach, her heart nearly stopped at the sight of the papers on her pillow. The memories hit her: of a shadow beside her sleeping form, delivering a handful of painted-over pages, of a woman armpit-deep in a mattress for more pages, years later. She trembled and took no notice of the hot drops of tea that spilled onto her fingers, only put the mug down to sit, disbelieving, by the pages. 

They were crisp white things, so unlike the pages that bubbled over strangled propaganda. The writing was cleaner, the ink strong and determined. They were neatly punched through and tied together with rough twine. There was no title page; began instantly, without a name or claim of authorship. 

It told her the story of the word shaker and the ax man, and their journey down the tree’s path. 

Her tears stained the pure paper and even blurred a few of the words, the ink becoming murky and fluid. It was twenty pages of a love story, of support and of death—of the worst heartbreak imaginable. And it was even about the restorative power of love, how it could clear ruins and create stronger fortresses against the pain of the world. There was even a drawing of a ring at the end. She couldn’t stop clutching the pages, now nearly destroyed through her powerful grip, to her chest. 

He returned home, soaking and tired, with barely enough time to prepare himself as she threw herself into his arms. 

~~~ 

When she returned she was no longer covered in a layer of Himmel Street dust but she wished that she was, wished that she had any sort of armor against the burning sun and Max’s eyes from halfway across the yard. She had asked to do this alone, and graciously he had agreed. She just wished he would look away. She took a seat in front of Papa’s granite, crossing her legs against the soft grass and leaning forward enough to rest her forehead against the hot stone. She could not bring herself to speak; was overwhelmed. 

It had been five years since the burial, five years since she had planted her feet on this sacred ground. The earth, blooming beautifully around her, seemed to welcome her back. 

Blindly she traced his name with her palm, scrapped it painfully against the stone. 

_I’m going now._

She thought of the illustrations and photographs of Australian hills, yelled them loudly in her mind so they could hear her, six feet beneath her skin. _I’m going and I can’t come back._

The pain of stone against forehead became too much to bear; she shifted, lay across her parents, hands cupping beneath her ear somewhere over her mama’s belly button. Her toes dug into the earth just over Papa’s left arm. She stared at Rosa’s birth date. 

"Max is taking care of me." She didn’t know what gave her the strength to say it aloud; she hoped the wind hadn’t carried her voice to where he waited beneath an oak tree. "He wants to marry me.” It all caught in her throat, emotion almost choking her. “He proposed with a book.” She sucked in desperate gulps of air, keeping the sobs down. 

She rolled onto her back. “I’m going now.” 

She didn’t move for three quarters of an hour.


End file.
